Just as a heads up for anybody interested, Street Fighter 4 is fucking awesome. I only played using one character (Ken) but it remains faithful to a 2-D plane fighter as opposed to adding in too much 3-D bullshit. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a graphically updated version of the other SF games with a few new characters--but this is a good thing.

Also I'm probably going to be purchasing Soul Calibur 4 today, so I may soon be available for online mode.

Thanks for the impressions, Marshmallow. Glad to hear that Street Fighter 4 is both staying true to its roots while also modernizing. Methinks it remains one of the last bastions of 2D fighting.

And Miz, agreed. In an FF fighting game it would be silly not to have dedicated brawlers like Sabin or Zell in it. With their special attacks being done by pressing button combos, they're made for fighting games.

Anyway, I was thinkin', and FFVI actually has a couple of neat options to fill the good guy slot. Edgar has a freakin' chainsaw and Cyan's a total badass. And Locke is.. well, he's just hawt, not really a great choice.

I just never wanna see Setzer again, after KH2. I don't trust 'em to redesign him.

Ultimecia's lame. Now if the FF8 hero and villain reps had been Squall and SEIFER, that would create some depth, what with how Squall and Seifer both used different tactics and techniques in their gunblade fighting. They even use different styles of gunblade.

For me, a good FF fighting game would have the brawlers and martial artists like Sabin, Zell, and Tifa in it. But with FF games having the kinds of casts that they have, picking and choosing characters is difficult.

But whatever. I never really thought Square Enix was any good at making fighting games. Ehrgeiz was lousy, Tobal did nothing for me, and I wasn't a big Bushido Blade fan. Capcom, SNK, Arc System Works, and Namco are where it's at for fighting games. I mean with Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, Marvel vs. Capcom, King of Fighters, Guilty Gear, Tekken, and Soul Calibur, RPG king Square Enix IMO doesn't have a prayer in the fighting arena.

I don't think we've talked much about the actual characters we use yet in this thread. I play my fair share of fighting games, and while I end up usually focusing most of my energies on one character, I don't like picking the same person over and over when I'm playing against a friend. Is this a normal thing though? All the best people I play against usually use the same character or team of characters more often. I see the point of that, but I feel like it's boring for the other person to just keep using the same person over and over in matches. I assume this is more acceptable with older fighting games where there's a more limited character selection, though.

To get into specifics though, I've found that I'm particularly good with at least one character in most fighting games that I play.

When I was younger, I always used Dhalsim in Street Fighter II on account of his stretchy arms. I always figured it was easier to hit my opponent from halfway across the screen using one button instead of inputting complicated combinations. However, as I got older and I played more and more Street Fighter, I found myself getting better and better with Ken (and just Shotos in general too), especially in Street Fighter 3 (3s) and Alpha 3. This carried over to games like Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 and Capcom Vs SNK 2, where I ended up using characters with whom I was familiar. At least with the latter, I got stuck using Capcom characters exclusively because of the difficulty I had with most SNK characters just in general. In MvC2 I also tend to play Cable, Megaman, Gambit, Sakura and Captain Commando.

I've played a bunch of non-capcom fighters as well, including Tekken 5, Soul Calibur everything and a couple ridiculous things like Armjoe. I suck at Tekken, but when I get stuck playing it with someone, I usually use Lei. In Soul Calibur I like Kilik because of his range and relatively high speed. Conversely, in SC4 I've been playing a lot of both Nightmare and Seigfried because I found that if the opponent gives you any time to actually hit them, you can keep it up pretty reliably until they're dead.

Depends on the game for me. In Brawl I like to stick with Ike, but in SC4 I use every character. It gets boring using the same character over and over again. I think I'm best with the Apprentice though, of all the characters.